US biotech claims rival poached key employees to speed up delayed drug programme
Rocket Pharma says Lexeo Therapeutics hired its staff to keep clinical trial programme on track | Employees transferred confidential and proprietary information before leaving the company, it claims.
US biotech firm Rocket Pharmaceuticals has accused rival Lexeo Therapeutics of hiring away key employees to gain advantages in the development of treatments for cardiac disease.
On Thursday, October 12, the New Jersey-headquartered firm initiated a civil action in New York, against Lexeo and two former Rocket employees; an associate director of chemistry manufacturing, controls (CMC) and analytical development; and a senior scientist.
Its allegations include trade secret misappropriation, breach of contract, tortious interference with contractual relations, and unfair competition.
Rocket Pharma develops gene and cell therapies for rare paediatric diseases, generally using the adeno-associated virus (AAV) or the lentiviral vector (LVV) platforms. Its work includes an AAV treatment for PKP2-arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM), a rare heart condition.
The firm says it carefully guards its confidential and proprietary information due to the enormous effort and resources it devotes to developing its treatment programmes.
Lexeo Therapeutics is headquartered in New York, and also undertakes gene therapy research. According to the suit, Lexeo “seeks to compete directly with Rocket Pharma on PKP2, and likely other Rocket Pharma cell and gene therapies as well”.
‘Quest to catch up’
Rocket Pharma claims that Lexeo was struggling to meet a deadline it had touted to investors regarding clinical trials for an AAV gene therapy treatment for cardiac pathology. This, it says, led the firm to hire key Rocket Pharma scientists “in its quest to catch up to Rocket Pharma’s programmes, including its AAV cardiovascular gene therapies”.
Lexeo “sought to hire Rocket Pharma employees with experience and exposure to confidential Rocket Pharma information that could jumpstart Lexeo’s delayed programme,” according to the suit.
The firm claims Lexeo interviewed and sent formal offer letters to two key members of its staff.
The former associate director is accused of transferring more than 122,987 work-related emails and documents to his personal computer for the benefit of Lexeo, shortly before he left Rocket.
He also allegedly “covertly took unauthorised photos of Rocket Pharma laboratories” on his phone, which are said to have captured proprietary lab protocols from a fellow employee’s lab notebook, cell culture techniques, and cell data related to AAV and LVV cell and gene therapy development.
Rocket also claims that the former associate director downloaded an app for erasing evidence of deleted applications and used it “to mask further data transfers” from his Rocket Pharma computer.
The former senior scientist is accused of transmitting trade secret information to a personal email account before her departure, including an email from her former supervisor with a link to “substantial amounts of Rocket Pharma confidential and proprietary manufacturing documents”.
Both employees failed to disclose their new employer during their exit interviews, Rocket says, despite being obliged to do so.
A ‘synergistic advantage’
“Lexeo continued the cover-up”, Rocket claims, by issuing assurances that the former employees would not be using or disclosing any confidential, proprietary, and trade secret information belonging to Rocket. However, it allegedly placed them in roles to assist with manufacturing AAV gene therapies.
Rocket claims that the new hires gave Lexeo “a synergistic advantage” as they had not only worked together at Rocket but “compounded their knowledge of Rocket Pharma’s confidential, proprietary, and trade secret information”.
It believes the information Lexeo gained from the employees allowed it to “close the gap with Rocket Pharma and receive IND [investigational new drug] clearance from the FDA for its PKP2 programme just weeks after Rocket Pharma secured the same.”
The firm is asking the court for orders preventing the defendants from using or disclosing its confidential information, an order preventing Lexeo from competing and working in the market for AAV gene and LVV cell therapy treatments targeting cardiac diseases, and damages in an amount to be determined at trial.
The complaint was filed at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Finnegan is acting as counsel for the plaintiff. Counsel have not yet appeared for the defendants.
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